Back in October 2016 I published this article commenting on how exciting it felt after a long time with zero information about new releases to finally have a Coming Soon page on the Black Library website – a place where fans like me could find out about new books and audios due for release in the following months. Just under two and a half years later the Coming Soon page quietly disappeared, much to the disappointment – in some cases vociferous – of many BL fans. Now the dust has settled I want to have a look at what happened, what’s been said since, and what the future looks like for finding out about new BL releases.
What happened
I think it’s safe to say that Black Library have had an interesting relationship with the idea of letting their customers know what’s coming in advance, and over the years they’ve taken various approaches ranging from providing no information at all, to having regularly-updated website pages listing pretty much exactly what’s coming several months in advance. When the Coming Soon page appeared on the BL site, and subsequently the GW site, it felt like a really positive step forward, and I definitely got used to being able to plan ahead for purchases, not to mention getting myself organised for reviews, interviews, blog posts and so on.
I commented in February’s Black Library Monthly article that it was unusual for June’s new titles to have not been revealed – in recent months this had happened on the first Saturday of the month so I’d expected it on the 2nd March. That absence now looks like the precursor to the Coming Soon page being removed, which as far as I can tell happened on the 23rd March. There was no announcement about it, and no specific information provided by BL; it was just quietly retired, causing a fair amount of consternation from fans online. One day it was live, the next day it was gone, and fans quite quickly noticed!
If you take a look at Black Library’s Facebook page you’ll see lots of visitor posts asking about what happened and why it was removed – as I write this there are 16 such posts, some of which have comments from the BL Facebook team. Here’s an example:
As you can see, it’s clearly a deliberate move from Black Library, although a comment saying it’s gone for good “as far as we’re aware” doesn’t feel like a very confident statement from BL. It’s also worryingly – if not surprisingly – reactive, waiting for fans to ask about what’s happening rather than putting out a statement in advance to set fans’ expectations. I talked quite a lot about communication in my article about the Solar War on-sale, and this feels like another example of how not to keep your customers happy.
Let’s be clear, however – this categorically is not the end of the world! We’re not talking about drastic changes (at least I hope not) to Black Library’s output; instead we’re talking about information being provided (or otherwise), and about letting fans plan ahead, budget and get excited for what’s coming next. It’s not a massive issue in the grand scheme of things but I do understand why there’s been frustration from fans, not just because of the decision but also because of the lack of communication from Black Library. I’ll talk a little later about what BL have said so far, because to be fair to them they have provided a bit of information…just not very much.
Why it happened and what came next
Without much in the way of communication from Black Library it’s hard to know for sure what the reasoning was for this decision – to not just stop updating the Coming Soon page but to remove it entirely. I’ve seen various theories being suggested, some quite sensible and others verging on conspiracy-theory levels of complexity, but unless BL decides to start being unusually candid I’ve a feeling we’re never going to know for sure. Ultimately that’s their prerogative – they’re under no obligation to explain themselves if they don’t want to (although I can’t think it would have done them any harm in this instance), and equally they’re not obliged to provide release information in advance if they don’t want to.
My feeling is that there were probably lots of factors combining to inform the decision that was made. I would hope that the decision was at least partly data-led, perhaps informed by the page view analytics for the Coming Soon page (a quick check of Google Tag Assistant confirms that Google Analytics is definitely set up for the BL site) – I know I used it quite a lot, but maybe it wasn’t getting enough traffic to warrant keeping it running. Alternatively, with a lot of time and effort being put into the Warhammer Community site and social media, perhaps it’s part of a wider community strategy of which we’re only just starting to see the first elements. There’s also an argument to say that perhaps Black Library simply don’t think they need to provide information in advance, although that’s probably a bigger topic for another day!
At the time of writing this, there’s really not much to go on with BL having said so little about this…however, there are two things to look at. Firstly, I saw several people on social media and online forums sharing responses to emails they had sent to the BL customer services team. Here’s one of those emails (borrowed from Facebook):
The message here is an interesting mixture of clarity and ambiguity. Ambiguity because it’s not very clear what “streamlining our site and services” really means (classic hedge-your-bets marketing speak) and clarity because there are simple, straightforward recommendations to use the newsletter/Community site/social media to keep up to date. I’ll talk a little bit later about whether those are good recommendations or not, but at least this response reiterates what we saw in Facebook comments.
To make things a little more interesting, however, a post did go up on the 31st March – on both Facebook and Instagram – showing a neat pile of BL books with the following message:
Looking for the Black Library Coming Soon page?
Subscribe to the newsletter instead for your monthly dose of forthcoming releases – the first one will be sent on the 6th of May! Subscribe below, and keep an eye out on Warhammer Community and our social pages for updates.
As you can probably guess, seeing as I haven’t included a screenshot of said post, it’s no longer available on either Facebook or Instagram. From what I can tell, both of them were taken down sometime within 24 hours of going live, and while I didn’t look in detail at the Instagram post I’m pretty sure from checking out the Facebook post that the predominantly negative (and sometimes unpleasant) comments were to blame for that.
The Black Library newsletter
This is a great example of how important it is for us as fans to remember that however frustrated we might be, taking that frustration out on the poor folks managing a brand’s social media accounts is usually not the way to go! Those posts should have been a forum for providing feedback on the decision to remove the Coming Soon page, but because of the rampant negativity of some parts of the fanbase, that’s no longer an option. Black Library aren’t obliged to sit back and just accept waves of negativity, so while I’m not a big fan of deleting social media posts in this way, I can’t say I blame them either.
However, I think those posts could have been handled better by Black Library as well. To my mind they added as much confusion as clarity, as they seemed to suggest that the BL newsletter would be a single source of information about upcoming releases (or at least the main source), whereas previous Facebook comments from BL had implied that information would be shared across multiple channels. They also didn’t mention how far in advance the newsletter would be looking (next month’s releases? Two months ahead?), while the 6th May seemed like a long time to wait for the first update. All told maybe not the most carefully thought-out response…but the fanbase didn’t cover itself in glory either.
The fans’ response
Whatever the reasoning behind it, this has proved to be a largely unpopular decision – I’ve seen a lot of unhappy fans on social media (both BL’s own Facebook page as you saw above, and separate fan pages) and forums, and there’s even been a petition set up calling for the page to be brought back (with over 200 signatures at the time of writing this). If I’m honest I think there’s a lot of unnecessary vitriol in those reactions, and some people are getting a bit too caught up in the anger. As we’ve seen with BL’s social media posts being removed, I just don’t think it helps to get angry about this sort of thing – all that does is blow it all up out of proportion, and result in yet more backward steps.
The petition on change.org
That being said, I completely understand why people are unhappy. There are lots of reasons, but probably the most compelling is that buying (and for lots of us collecting) Black Library books is a pretty expensive hobby, so it’s important to be able to plan ahead and budget for what to buy and when. The Coming Soon page was a brilliant tool for that; a single source of information which could be relied upon to include the vast majority of upcoming releases (with a few exceptions) and to be regularly updated. It really was a good solution from a fan’s perspective, and it was pretty disappointing to have that removed with no explanation and no real reassurance that a suitable replacement would be provided.
It’s all rather baffling, to be honest. However good a reason BL might have had for removing the page, and whatever their plans are in this respect, they’re not helping themselves with the way they’re managing their customers’ expectations. It’s no wonder fans are getting upset, with initial radio silence followed by vague justifications like “streamlining our site and services” and conflicting suggestions of what the future solutions are going to be, including the likely need to check multiple sources instead of just the one.
While all that might make things easier for Black Library to manage, it doesn’t feel an awful lot like streamlining from a customer’s perspective. It doesn’t seem to take into account customers’ preferences – for example not everyone wants to use Facebook or Instagram; we’re all swamped by endless marketing emails which makes it hard to sort the wheat from the chaff; and needing to check three or four different places for information is inevitably going to be more time-consuming than visiting a single page. In a modern age of endless demands on customers’ time, you might think that expecting people to spend longer looking for information is perhaps not a great idea.
A cynical mind might suggest that it’s an intentional decision on the part of BL/GW to pull back on the amount of information being provided in advance, and encourage impulse buying among fans instead. I don’t believe that – it always feels like a conspiracy theory to me, but who knows…maybe it genuinely is the case. It seems very strange to me, though. Remember that BL is beholden to the wider book trade (Amazon, physical bookstores etc.) and provides release information through those channels months in advance – for example if you search on Amazon right now you’ll find loads of titles which haven’t yet been confirmed by BL. If they’re having to do that anyway, and fans (like me) who can be bothered to go looking can find all of that information online…what’s the point in reducing the amount of information provided via their own channels?
My take on it all
For a moment, forget about what’s happened and the absence of information so far. Maybe Black Library have got a grand plan for what to do next; maybe there’s going to be a new Coming Soon page on the Community site, or they’re going to start engaging with fans in much more detail about upcoming releases via all of their different channels. Maybe the newsletter is going to move away from the rather bland, ‘today’s releases’-style sales pitch it is now and become something more informative and engaging. For all we know the new solution is going to be even better than what we had before – we just don’t know.
In my opinion – and your mileage may very well vary – this is a real storm in a teacup, an issue which should never have been allowed to become an issue. That’s at least partially the fault of Black Library for not communicating well, but all of the anger and frustration that’s sprung up as a result hasn’t helped, as it’s turned the situation into an unnecessary ‘them against us’ situation. With a little more communication and a little more patience we could have avoided this whole situation!
For me personally, I don’t mind too much what the solution is as long as BL continue to provide information about upcoming releases in advance – by which I mean months in advance, not one day in advance! I’d much rather look in one place rather than have to hunt through old emails, Facebook posts (and oh how annoying Facebook can be) and archived Community posts (which really aren’t very easy to search through at the moment), but I can cope with doing that if I have to. I’m sure there are good solutions to most, if not all, of the issues with using those channels – adding a searchable ‘BL Coming Soon’ tag to Community posts, for example – which BL could implement fairly easily if they want to.
Whatever the plan is, however, why not tell us that in advance? What possible benefit can there be to Black Library of winding up customers by failing to provide information, by failing to manage expectations? It really doesn’t make much sense, and I can’t help thinking that the majority of the negativity that’s sprung up around this issue could have been avoided quite easily. I don’t want to be too critical, because I don’t know the full details – none of us do, outside of the folks within BL who made the decision. The problem is, though, that the pressure is now much greater on BL to provide a really good solution. I just hope they manage it.
Possible implications
On a personal note, I worry that whatever the future solution is, it’s going to involve providing information much closer to when each title is due to be released. The Coming Soon page provided release information up to three months in advance, which helped me to not just budget for purchases but also to plan for what I want to write on Track of Words. I’ve been able to arrange author interviews and write articles which have required a lot of notice and taken weeks to plan and write.
If that window of time is reduced, there’s a decent chance I’ll have to stop writing Rapid Fire author interviews, for example, which I feel would be a real shame. I’ve been organising and publishing these interviews for nearly two years now, and in 2018 they were viewed almost 17.5k times. I’d like to think a few of those page views resulted in sales for BL…
I hope it’s obvious, but the idea of those interviews is to publish them as close to the release date as possible so that they help build excitement for each new book or audio, and help fans decide whether to buy it. I need time to prepare the questions, bearing in mind I have to fit everything in around a full time job, and authors need time to answer the questions seeing as they’re already busy with the important job of actually writing these stories (plus often working full time jobs themselves). As such, where possible I try to arrange them weeks in advance. If I can’t plan my workload and arrange for interviews to be ready for the right moment, I can’t see myself keeping going with them. I feel like that would be disappointing for me, for the authors and for the fans, so I really hope it doesn’t come to that.
What’s next
Maybe I’m being a little naive, but I’d really love to see Black Library address this question publicly, and talk to us – the fans and customers – about what their plans are. They’ve obviously given it a go with those social media posts, but that didn’t work. I don’t think there needs to be a massively detailed response, just a bit of information that goes beyond ‘keep an eye on these four places’ to help demonstrate that they are thinking about us when they’re making their decisions. Maybe a Community post would be a good way to do that, or bring the release-focused newsletter forward a few weeks and include a bit of context about why they think that’s the right solution. Whatever the choice, some kind of communication would go a good way towards calming people down, I think.
Time will tell, of course. Perhaps all the fuss will blow over in a few months, and we’ll all forget that the Coming Soon page was ever a thing. If you’re of a mind to try to make your voice heard, however, and you want to send some feedback to Black Library, I’d suggest the best way to do that is to try and be constructive rather than rampantly negative. If you look at the visitor posts on BL’s Facebook site which are still visible, they’re all reasonably polite, and there are responses from BL (albeit fairly stock responses), so maybe give that a go. Send in an email to BL’s customer service team; you might end up getting the same response as the one I included earlier, but at least you’re letting them know what you think.
Don’t forget, as well, that the big Games Workshop community survey is coming up soon. I’m certainly going to be focusing my feedback (both positive and negative) on the Black Library side of things, as that’s my main focus within the hobby, and I can’t see any harm in using that as a forum to talk about what we’d each like to see BL do in future.
***
You can also let me know what you think about this issue, whether you’re sad to see the Coming Soon page go or baffled by what all the fuss is about. Drop me a line in the comments section below, or find me on Facebook or Twitter!